


Infinite Risks

by WInger



Category: Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Haikyuu!!
Genre: Action, Aliens, Angst, Dark Humor, Death, Drama, Edge of Tomorrow AU, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Perfectionism, Relationship driven, Romance, Sci-Fi, Suicide, Time Loop, War, character driven, dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 11:41:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17559722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WInger/pseuds/WInger
Summary: Oikawa and Iwaizumi are partner soldiers fighting a seemingly hopeless war against an invading alien species on Earth. A day in battle, Oikawa is killed after getting doused by a very specific kind of alien blood. But his death is far from final - the blood imparts a unique time looping ability to him that makes him effectively immortal – whenever he dies, reality and time as he experiences it restarts back to the start of the day of his very first death. After hundreds of resets he’s most definitely going mad, but he’ll risk all his sanity and a million different heartbreaks for his ultimate goal: saving both Iwaizumi and the world.---He’s expecting to hear some sort of variation on the words I love you next, so when Iwaizumi actually says “It’s not fair that it has to be you”, Oikawa is so surprised that he finds himself at a loss of words.It’s an even rarer sentiment than the previous one, as in all the loops that he’d shared with Suga or Iwaizumi about his ability, they never had the time to express sympathy for his condition.“It’s my fate,” Oikawa responds slowly. He’s crying.“It’s too lonely,” Iwaizumi’s heart sounded broken. “And I’m not there with you. Not really.”---





	Infinite Risks

**Author's Note:**

> The fic I wrote for my giftee in the Haikyuu Volleycamp Aoba Johsai Secret Santa Exchange! They said "I don't separate iwaoi" and apparently loves angst

_10 th_

Oikawa’s been granted an unthinkable power that could change the entire outcome of the war. He’s been made immortal, or something like it, after he got doused in one entire alien body's worth of Mimic blood. Aided by his friend, the resident mad scientist/conspiracy theorist Sugawara, he’s been able to figure out why and what was happening to him, and most importantly, _what_ do with it. 

Firstly he died, in battle against one of the aliens.

Its blood dissolved through his skin and entered his bloodstream.

As a result, the aliens’ ability to time loop – unlimited resetting of time from point of death, a mechanism in which the enemy had been using to develop sure-win battle strategies – has been transferred over to him.

Now with infinite time of his own, Oikawa could figure out the proper path to win this war so hard, none of the people dear to him would have to be sacrificed. It’s an insane burden, but Oikawa has plenty of fire to burn.

Except, after blowing through this new, insane, mind-bending new ability of his for ten loops straight, he suddenly finds himself due for a much-delayed, much needed bout of introspection before he can continue.

The knowledge that he’s ‘testing’ out pathways, or that no permanent consequences will come from his decisions, does not lessen the pain and surprise of his own physical deaths. But then he finds out there’s something worse than even that of his own infinite deaths. The fact that he doesn’t even consider it before it occurs for the very first time proves that he’d been way in over his head.

Because _Iwaizumi_ dying – horribly, painfully, in shock and terror, in front of his eyes – is the true test he had to reckon with. _Will_ _have to_ reckon with, in all the other loops - however many it took before he found the perfect one that lead to Earth's victory. 

He’s in so much shock that he doesn’t even think of shooting himself in the head to end the loop ASAP, cut short nightmare of pain and confusion for them both _._ Instead Oikawa stumps and sobs and screams and wails until an alien claw swings by and cleaves his heart and body into two.

* * *

 

_11 th _

He reflects, as he wakes up back in the beginning – on their bed, gathered loosely in Iwaizumi’s arms; the pain from his last death disappearing faster than a real nightmare – that there was at least some sort of respite, which that was that at least Iwaizumi, this one and all future ones, got to die. This Oikawa had to remember them all.

It’s a very rough deal for him, and he finds himself thinking about it while sitting in one corner of shower stall, trying to meditate the pain away under running water. He has a feeling he’ll be doing this very often.

It’s all very fucked up, but at least he had an endless supply of Iwaizumis. It was kind of like a little trade-off. It doesn't make up for the amount of loneliness he feels, but at least, in this plane of endless time, it is the one constant that he could anchor himself to. 

* * *

 

_31 st _

Infinite manners of living and dying. Oikawa ends his loops differently each time. The best is when he died first or alone, far away and out of Iwaizumi’s sight.

But even as he fully mastered one battleground, a different one would have entirely new factors to juggle, and there was an abundance of opportunities for him to be surprised by death, death, and more death.

He’s found himself next to Hanamaki or Matsukawa multiple times now as they died.

He thought that there was no way their deaths would hurt him on the level that Iwaizumi’s did. Clearly he didn’t know himself as well as he thought he did – as all this time looping was constantly showing to him, in fact.

A captain was nothing without his team. The more of their deaths he got to witness, the more convinced he was that he had to ensure all these people also lived in that perfect reality he was seeking. Those two might not be as close as Iwaizumi is to him, but Oikawa’s been steadily accumulating survivor’s guilt. And with all the time in the world, he decided on a tangent to do something very uncharacteristic of him – he indulged in his feelings. He tried to place Mattsun in specific positions that he deemed to be safe – but he only lasted on average for up to an hour more before dying. He shadowed Hanamaki and directed him out of each and every harm – “What the _fuck_ , Oikawa!” – but then Matsukawa and Iwaizumi both dies.

By the 31st time he realizes he’s fallen deep down into a rabbit hole. There’s no saving all the people he wanted to save _individually._ All his efforts had only been counterproductive to his mental health, especially because he’s not a person who’s ever been graceful about failure.

The kicker was that he’d known all of this all already, from the start. This is why one of Oikawa's guiding instincts is to never pick feelings over logic.

* * *

 

_32 nd _

Too bad he couldn’t choose not to feel.

* * *

 

_45 th _

His own deaths hurt less. Now that he’s used to it, he never went anywhere without strapping hidden knives and pistols all over his body so that he could end things when death doesn’t come soon enough.

He doesn’t think of it as suicide. It’s not if his consciousness never gets a break. It’s mercy, really. 

Iwaizumi’s – don’t hurt less.

As for his team’s? Those he’s slowly getting indifferent over. It had taken him time not only to grow a thick shell around his heart, but also to sink into a deep enough pit within himself. In better words, it’s sharpening his mental focus and becoming more goal-oriented.

In honest words: he’s down to only saving Iwaizumi. He’ll find some way to forgive himself over the other deaths after he’s earned that future. 

* * *

 

_101 st _

A hundred loops down. How many more to go? Oikawa couldn’t even begin to guess. Being confronted by his own inadequacy on all fronts in spite of the literal torture he's been through is his new norm. 

As always, his fate remained far out of reach over his ability to control. 

If there's any new certainty he's learnt, apart from specific weak chinks in the alien's bodies, there is the fact that Iwaizumi only uses his first name under very specific sets of circumstance, which is right when himself, or Oikawa, or the two of them both are about to die.

He doesn’t know what to think about that, to be honest.

Oikawa needed a fucking break.

* * *

 

_111 th  _

It takes him many tries before he successfully convinces stubborn, bull-headed, I’m-a-soldier-till-I-die Iwaizumi to elope with him on one of the loops. It involved a lot of verbal manipulation, and he had to painstakingly explain his alien ability every single time. The winning strategy, it turned out, was saying that he’d always dreamed of marrying his Iwa-chan in complete secrecy without anybody’s knowledge or blessings.

Or more precisely, when he’d said “I want to marry you, Iwa-chan,” Iwaizumi’s face had gone dark, so much so that Oikawa wasn’t even sure he heard the rest of his argument. Interesting. His mind looked like it was elsewhere, but before Oikawa could think to pry his secret from him, Iwaizumi agreed and went “So what happens at the end of it?”

“We die together,” Oikawa tells him, earnest and blunt and not knowing how to sugarcoat it.

They go on a drive. Oikawa doesn’t have an actual destination, but Iwaizumi doesn’t need to know that, and anyhow his mind is preoccupied. So they drive, mostly in silence, Oikawa only concerned with coming by a motel far enough that would get them at least 10 hours of uninterrupted peace.

In the middle of nowhere, they rent a room on the top floor of a century-old building. It's not very high, but it is the tallest building in the vicinity and their window offered an unobstructed view of the town, so they left the curtains open.

They had sex, cuddled, napped, repeat. Ate, showered, rested, repeat.

At around noon the following day, the TV was switched on for the first time to the news channel, showing footage of their coast being overrun by monsters. Iwaizumi’s attention was out the window, unmistakably waiting for the first signs of the enemy.

Oikawa mutes the TV. It gets his attention. Iwaizumi half-turns into as Oikawa comes over and wraps his arms around him, and pushes his face into his back and shoulders. “Don’t look,” he sighs softly. Dreamy and lethargic, a result of the inner peace he'd bought for with his money. “Just tell yourself that none of this will be permanent.” So marked was the contrast between his mood and to the state of things being shown on TV that he wondered if it's not loving that he was coming across as, but tactless and psychopathic. 

Iwaizumi squeezes his left hand, his finger pads digging into Oikawa’s palm as tightly as Oikawa was clinging onto his torso. “I wasn’t thinking about that.”

Doubtful, but Oikawa accepts it. He waits patiently as Iwaizumi comes up with his next words, listening to Iwaizumi’s heart beat and feeling his chest rise and fall – as predictable a pattern, as reliable a rhythm as any. 

“I was thinking of you,” Iwaizumi begins. It was a simple sentiment, but rarely expressed and so unexpectedly moving to his ears. In the state that Oikawa’s been reduced to, wetness gathers in his eyes immediately and he has to press his face more deeply into Iwaizumi to hide them.

He’s expecting to hear some sort of variation on the words _I love you_  next _,_ so when Iwaizumi actually says “It’s not fair that it has to be you”, Oikawa is so surprised that he finds himself at a loss of words.

It’s an even rarer sentiment than the previous one, as in all the loops that he’d shared with Suga or Iwaizumi about his ability, they never had the time to express sympathy for his condition.

“It’s my fate,” Oikawa responds slowly. He’s crying.

“It’s too lonely,” Iwaizumi’s heart sounded broken. “And I’m not there with you. Not really.”

“But you love me,” Oikawa says, reminding them both of the only constant that keeps him going. “And I love you.” Enough to reset the same day, same playthrough, same reality cycle, over and over again, until he finds the one where Iwaizumi doesn’t die and the world isn’t compromised. No alternatives. Oikawa’s motto is to hit at his goal, over and over again until it breaks; even for a situation like this, where the asking price is his heart and soul, piece by piece, every single time.

Though – it _has_ been over a hundred loops. He’s certain that after this, no amount of therapy in the world is ever going to help. And if even Oikawa feels this way himself he must look out of his mind to ordinary people, such as to his one poor and confused lover.

That’s why he can’t bring himself to say _I love you more than the world._ He's well aware that nothing is worth holding back now, when there’s an infinite number of risks he’s allowed to take. But he’s afraid that Iwaizumi would try and change his mind once he hears it. Noble, self-sacrificing Iwaizumi.

Mercifully, Iwaizumi gives him a break and doesn’t continue the conversation. The view outside their window is changing, a debris storm slowly creeping up the horizon. He’d told Iwaizumi to stop looking, but over his shoulders he now found himself unable to tear his gaze away, magnetized by the destructive inevitability of fate.

“Are you no longer scared of dying?”

His question makes Oikawa smile. It’s an ironic one, but a smile nonetheless. “Each time I die,” he launches into the same old, “I wake up in your arms. We’re in bed. It’s 4.30 in the morning, and you’re deeply asleep.” He kisses Iwaizumi on the neck. “It’s the only peace I get.”

In return Iwaizumi pulls his left hand up to his lips. Slow, aching, not breaking the kiss. As close to timeless as he could make it. 

The storm crawls closer, more than debris and dust, but also alien and human bodies.

“Like this,” Oikawa whispers, getting sudden inspiration. He pulls Iwaizumi over to the bed and starts arranging them. “I’ve never died in your arms before,” he murmurs, in explanation. Iwaizumi’s face twists and Oikawa feels bad, really, he’d meant for that to sound romantic. He's far too desensitized to death and horror, but he genuinely doesn't know how to go back. 

While Oikawa pauses, unsure of how to apologize, Iwaizumi grabs and kisses him. But of course, this gesture means more to this Iwaizumi than it did to him.

In the final minute, Oikawa’s the one to break the kiss and settle down. Iwaizumi’s heartbeat is agitated, and he sympathized. It’s against both of their natures to give up. His arms are secure around him, a lot tighter than the normal. He both loves and wishes it wasn’t so.

It’s not that Oikawa’s no longer afraid of death. He’s jaded over his own demise, but Iwaizumi’s? Never.

He kisses him one final time, on the head.

“Tooru,” he whispers. “I love you. More than anything else in the world.”

_112 th _

Oikawa doesn’t blink. His world warps painfully, fire-red and black morphing into cool and barely lit grey-blue. His body is sucked into a vortex, and it’s like he’s being pulled apart cell by cell only to be put back bit by bit in the exact same position.

Iwaizumi hasn’t moved, but he’s changed. His breathing is a lot deeper and his arms not as tight.

Oikawa gets up, acting on the urgency to mope. He’s careful not to wake him.

He locks himself in their bathroom with the decision to rub water over and over his face until he tires himself out. All these loops, and he’s finally figured out why running water tap water pleases him so much. From the moment the tap is switched on, the liquid runs unbroken, down the sink, into the pipes, to the treatment facilities and back out again through the same tap. A loop that he had full and complete control of.

He doesn’t care to know how long he’s stuck his head under water, moving from sink to shower, but it’s enough to get Iwaizumi’s attention. Oikawa can hear him pounding on the door. “You okay?”

He’s touched that Iwaizumi cares, but also surprised, because the old Oikawa that this Iwaizumi was familiar with was a lot more resilient than _this_ Oikawa. Either Iwaizumi’s always been more attuned than Oikawa’s given him credit for, or Oikawa let slipped that he's majorly upset.

He turns off the water immediately, and pats his face dry with a towel. His face is void of emotions, which works. But his eyes were too weary to be believably sleepy, and that wouldn’t do.

He doesn’t want to hesitate too long and give Iwaizumi more cause for worry, so he opens the door, towel over his head, and pushes things along the direction he wanted them to go. “Just rinsing a nightmare away,” he explains, draping his body onto Iwaizumi’s and expertly hiding his face.

Iwaizumi smacks the back of his head. “Don’t waste water,” he admonishes. Oikawa sighs internally, relieved. He lets himself get dragged back to bed. This time they sleep back-to-back, bodies barely touching the other.

But his mind is overactive and valiantly resists efforts to fall asleep. He wishes he could shoot himself in the head to stop the endless stream of depressing thoughts, but alas, suicides were useless to him now.

Iwaizumi grunts and starts to snore.

Oikawa slips out of the bed, soundless and light. He pulls on warm clothes, takes only his usual concealed weapons, and leaves their room.

The hallway is unguarded and quiet. He knows how sneak out from experiences in countless loops past, especially during that panic phase he’d briefly been on, when his goal had deviated to one of fleeing responsibility. Presently he's feeling quite inclined go on another bout of those, actually.

He’s confident, which is why he’s truly surprised when he’s snuck up on in the hangar, right after he’s unlocked a car.

Iwaizumi’s grabbing his right wrist, a frown and an expectant look in his eyes. There isn't much light, but his disapproval is crystal clear.

Oikawa swallows, not knowing what to say. In the first place his mind isn’t in a good enough place to handle this completely new development of events.

“What’s going on?” Iwaizumi demands. A new question as well – other times, he usually said “What are you doing?” or “Where are you going?”

Iwaizumi doesn't respond well to far-flung, utterly out of the blue answers, which is why Oikawa replies with “The fertility clinic.”

He balks. “ _What?_ ”

But even though he came up with it on the spot, it’s sounded as good a decision to Oikawa as any, since all he was acting on right now was the need to get the fuck away. In his current state, he didn’t even really want Iwaizumi to come along. He gets into the driver seat.

Iwaizumi gets into the passenger seat. The engine starts up and the lights of the car illuminates the worry on his face. “It’s not even going to be open.”

He's right. But “I just want to think about what life could be like for us after we win the war”. With all the time at his disposal, there was merit in investigating every little option, no matter how ridiculous they seemed. “You know you don’t have to come.” 

Iwaizumi’s scowls, though in all the other loops when Oikawa’s been moody, he’s never accepted the invitation to not follow. And he tended to respond predictably, in one of two manners. Sometimes its outright, “Not when your face looks like that” concern. Other times, it’s unabashed jealousy. “You have a surrogate you’re meeting with behind my back?”

Oikawa laughs, because both responses prove how much Iwaizumi loves and cares for him, and he loves feeling loved.

They ride quietly, Oikawa determined, Iwaizumi pensive. The radio is on, solely for Iwaizumi’s benefit. He’s sure, an hour and half into the drive, that Iwaizumi’s only going to be able to hold himself back for another hour tops before starting to nag Oikawa about turning around.

They reach their destination before Iwaizumi gets the chance to. Oikawa gets out of the car and waits for him, stared down in barely concealed surprise as they made their way to the specific machine he had in mind. It's an automated free service that visually constructed what a potential child between you and your partner would look like. He’s never tried it before, but he’s always been immensely curious about it.

“Read this,” Oikawa tells Iwaizumi, as he digs into his pockets for change. He hands him the brochure of _A Chance For Same-Sex Couples to Conceive (Male)_.

Iwaizumi refuses to take it. Oikawa sighs. “Did you know,” he paraphrases. “That the popularity of male carrier pregnancies is projected to overtake traditional choices of surrogacy or adoption in as little as the next five years? Couples report feeling greater intimacy with their babies every step of the pregnancy.” He slots it between Iwaizumi’s crossed arms and gets swatted in annoyance.

His boyfriend is making his deepest, most I-don’t-fucking-get-it frown. “You _abhor_ that concept even more than you hate kids.”

“We’re pretty attractive individuals, you and I,” he muses instead. If they had a couple quirk, it was that they practically never compliment the other on physical appearances – he knows, without looking, that Iwaizumi is both alarmed and disturbed by his sudden statement. “We would make good looking babies.”

And this machine is going to show them. It boots up after he inserts the money.

“Don’t you want to have children of your own, Iwa-chan?”

 _"You’ll_ be a terrible father,” Iwaizumi sasses him, repeating a sentiment Oikawa had often sworn himself in the past. It’s supposed to be a joke. He doesn’t find it so funny now, but he makes an effort anyway and gives him a wry smile. 

Which, of course, only makes him even more suspect to Iwaizumi. “What happened?” he demands, lowering his voice in greater concern.

“You know there’s a time limit on this machine? Once every 24 hours per couple. If we don’t like what we get today, we’ll have to try again on a different day.”

“Can you please just answer my question?”

“ _If_ I could loop time I’ll just replay this moment over and over again until I get the prettiest baby in the world.”

“What. Are you. _On._ About?”

“I’m saying that I’ll loop this half an hour specifically so I’ll be able to skip out on that long drive from the garrison, you know?”

“Why are you so upset?”

“I’m not upset.”

“Yes you-“

“Alright I am,” he interrupts, switching tracks so fast that Iwaizumi looked winded. “Humor me, Iwa-chan. Don’t you think that’ll be putting a time loop to good use? If, hypothetically speaking, that I had the ability to do such a thing.” This 'it's only a hypothesis' route he's used many times on Iwaizumi. Each time with the same surge of envy to be in the shoes where this could only be consideres as some ridiculous, unbelievable scenario. 

With reluctance, Iwaizumi slowly gets out: “Why would you waste that kind of ability on something as trivial as this when you could be using it to figure out how to win against our enemies instead?”

That’s a very Iwaizumi-like thing to say. It wipes the smile from Oikawa’s face.

“And it’s not like you at all to waste time… Oikawa?”

He knows there’s a wonky expression on his face right now. He’s trying not to reveal too much more. If he freaks Iwaizumi out too badly the only remedy was to shoot himself.

“Because it’s inconsequential,” he answers, only realizing for the first time how much he’s changed, now that’s he glimpsed the old him in Iwaizumi’s words.  

“You’re so loyal,” he comments. Iwaizumi still doesn't know what the hell he’s talking about. If- _When_ Oikawa finally does it, powers through the right loop and saves the entire world, will Iwaizumi still love him?

He’d never considered things from this perspective. What a depressing idea. Iwaizumi would probably check him into a mental hospital if he starts crying now, so he quickly turns his face away.

Only to have Iwaizumi grab and pulls his face over for close scrutiny. Oikawa sniffs, close to bursting under his intense glower.

“I hate it when you’re like this,” Iwaizumi tells him, and proceeds to hug him fiercely.

 _What does he mean, specifically?_ But he’s in too bad shape to ask.

“I hate it when you’re upset,” Iwaizumi growls, answering anyway. “I hate it when you’re all constipated over some massive secret. I don’t know _why_ you can’t tell me.” He’s shaking him with each sentence. “I don’t know if you even fucking know how differently this would be playing out if I was insecure and didn’t think you were as damned loyal as I am-“

 _That’s enough,_ Oikawa thinks, guilty as called, and he kisses Iwaizumi quickly in apology.

The machine beeps, drawing their attentions. The display screen reveals a computer-generated image of their would-be children, male and female. They were alright. In the car Oikawa had pictured a pretty doll of a girl, with eyes bigger than his, and curly locks of chocolate brown hair with the perfect amount of bounciness. The images on the screen weren’t quite so idealized. But it was their eyes that were truly striking, making these children unmistakably theirs – hard and sharp and fierce, Iwaizumi’s fire and Oikawa’s drive.

Iwaizumi presses the ‘Print’ button with an eye-roll, not knowing that Oikawa is indifferent because material goods have lost all value to him. He’ll remember this until he forgets it, and that's fine with him. This sort of trivial thing is nothing compared to the sort of stuff he held close to heart.    

“Will you love me?” he asks, his mind going back to that previous topic. It’s a strange question, inquired strangely. Again, there’s no way Iwaizumi would get it; Oikawa's definitely expecting to get snubbed. He's counting on that to be sufficient enough to snap him out of his moodiness, hopefully. 

Only Iwaizumi pulls away to look him in the eye and say “Forever.”

And  _then_  slaps Oikawa on the shoulder, as he did whenever he felt like he’d been manipulated into saying sappy shit. And he turns his face away from Oikawa's quickly enough, in embarrassment, pulling a red-eyed Oikawa towards the car in mutual silence.  

Oikawa's processing his one word, carving it into the membrane of his heart. These promises that he got out of Iwaizumi on irregular loops, they were like fuel for him to ride the curse out till the bitter end. No matter how long it'll take. 

Not for the world – that’s not what Oikawa’s trying so hard to save. It’s the one person that _meant_ the world to him that he’s hellbent on saving.

* * *

 

_143 rd _

Thanks to newfound motivation, Oikawa has been on a series of high-powered loops, coming up with innovative strategies that would bring his mission to entirely new heights. He hashed his discoveries and ideas with Suga repeatedly, studying the enemies' organization strategies and coming up with a checklist of twenty potential locations for the alien’s home base on Earth. 

It wasn’t a streak of success that he was on, but one of progress, which is also rewarding. He went through the list by flying out and putting a bomb in every single one of them with Iwaizumi at his side. They were down to the final one. He couldn’t help but feel an irresponsible amount of hope at what he’d been achieving, alongside these two. 

Even now, as their aircraft lists terribly to its left, autopilot wrecked and smoke coming out of both engines, with Oikawa forced to struggle against gravity while Iwaizumi alone fires round after round at powerful Mimics that kept trying to come in through their windows.

Iwaizumi is standing on his right, a negligible attempt to counter the weight imbalance.

In the chaos of moments such as this, a part of his mind detracts onto the wildest thoughts, such that he could feel the pressure of the mission alongside appreciation for the metaphor of Iwaizumi standing on this particular side towards him, time and again proving that he’s literally Oikawa’s right-hand man. His other half. The idea twists his lips up into a frenzied smile.

Even with all the noise he could clearly hear Iwaizumi mutter “You’re mad.”

“I’m focusing,” Oikawa assures him, wishing he had a third hand to takes one of his.

The aircraft dips abruptly to the right, and Oikawa knows instantly that they had one on the roof. The smirk on his face is replaced by concern. Iwaizumi reads his reaction and spins around, gun at the ready.

“You’re almost out,” Oikawa reminds him. “Take mine.”

But before he can, he hears the sound of the fuselage tearing. Reflected in the window he sees a number of long limbs squeezing through the ceiling at back of the plane in a blind attempt to reach them. Its weight unbalances the craft and slows them down. Iwaizumi throws his own rifle as a projectile before snatching Oikawa’s, steadily opening fire. He shoots steadily, pressed back to back with Oikawa.

But Oikawa’s aircraft isn’t obeying him at 100% and Iwaizumi will eventually run out of bullets. The Mimic, unfortunately, is agile and very alive.

“Grenade,” Oikawa orders, because he needs this weight gone. They're working against time – if this delay keep up, the two of them aren't going to be able to escape after they drop the bomb.

He hears a blast followed by a high-pitched wail. The aircraft trembles violently, but they’re freed from the Mimic. “No more grenades,” Iwaizumi announces.

Oikawa doesn’t even get to reply before another weight lands at the same spot, sliding more deeply through the gap in the fuselage than the previous one, hissing and clicking.

“Fuck,” Iwaizumi swears. “How are they coming from the skies?”

“Big jumps. Get rid of it,” Oikawa says, responding only for the sake of responding.

Iwaizumi opens fire.

He finishes this one off, but the corpse is stuck. “Grab onto something,” he warns, about to roll the plane.

Iwaizumi grabs his waist and the bolted down cockpit chair.

This body of the Mimic falls off. Oikawa gets a few seconds of uninterrupted flying in a half-embrace with his lover before, with comical predictably, another one lands on them. Thanks to the progress of the ones before had made, this one makes its way fully in, cautiously clinging against the walls while avoiding the bay doors that Oikawa had just opened. 

Iwaizumi lets go of him and fires, again.

He runs out of ammo before this one manages to die.

Oikawa swears. They were less than a minute away from destination, but with this insufferable additional weight, that time more than doubled. 

“Throw things at it,” he says, coming up with Plan B’s on the fly. He looks to his sides for expendable items. None that he could see, but Iwaizumi could probably find something. “Chairs. Crates. Knock it out.” Then he catches Iwaizumi’s face.

“We don’t have anything to throw,” he tells Oikawa, pulling out his serrated knife.

Something about Iwaizumi’s expression keeps Oikawa from turning back to the front. He looked too solemn to be thinking of the same Plan B as him.

And Oikawa knows why. Before Iwaizumi could open his mouth he firmly gives his “No.”

Iwaizumi crinkles his brows. It looked like resignation, disbelief, and goodbye all rolled into one.

“No.” Oikawa repeats, fiercer.

And Iwaizumi finally gets the words lodged in his throat out of his mouth. “Tooru…” he starts.

_“No.”_

They’re looking each other dead in the eye. “Save the world,” Iwaizumi finishes. His last words.

His tone kind and understanding. His eyes set and firm. Iwaizumi charges the Mimic, armed with no more than his blade.

Oikawa is howling _“HAJIME!”_ over and over again but Iwaizumi’s mind is set. Oikawa lets go of the steering wheels and goes after him. The aircraft plummets immediately. He watches, too late to stop him, as Iwaizumi sticks his blade into the middle of the Mimic’s chest, using his weight to leverage both their bodies out through the bay doors as the dying beast sticks its multiple limbs through his body.

Oikawa is not kind and understanding. He doesn’t believe in a world with Iwaizumi Hajime. He pulls out the small knife in his boot and slashes himself across the neck.

* * *

 

_144 th _

He wakes up, back in the same beginning: resting on top of Iwaizumi on their bed, gathered in his loose embrace.

The pain from the last loop is still raw, and it doesn't take long for this new body to get into loud, ugly sobbing.

Iwaizumi jerks awake by Oikawa’s fourth hiccup, stunned to see him all choked up. He moves to pat Oikawa’s head and back. “Nightmare?” he asks hoarsely.

Knowing that his woes are impossible to describe makes his tears come down that much harder, but Oikawa’s not just hurting – he’s angry, too. It’s hard to glare with eyes so full, so to convey his feelings he gets up, grabs his shirt collar and wrings him by the neck, all the while making the most pathetic whines. 

“What did I do?” Iwaizumi’s eyes are wide and bewildered. 

Explaining to him is so meaningless that Oikawa couldn’t even bear the thought of it – he rams his head into Iwaizumi’s chest and howls. Iwaizumi holds him, trying to offer comfort with his _‘What’s wrong?’_ s and _‘Talk to me’_ s.

Eventually Oikawa manages to get two words out: “Never again.”

“Yeah okay,” Iwaizumi readily agrees. “Never again. Whatever the fuck that even is. Never. I won’t do it again, alright? Oikawa?”

Oikawa vows that that was the first and only time Iwaizumi kills himself so that he could save the world.

* * *

 

_160 th _

144 had been so traumatic, he’s no longer able to enjoy uninterrupted, non-wakeful sleep in all the succeeding loops.

All he had were nightmares of his deepest fears, and they were vivid and especially triggering because his dreams sampled from the extensive library of his actual memories.

But then they morphed into something else – rehashed memories played out in sickening detail, yes, but on top of that, _weird_  new sights. 

He initially thought they were scenes from the millions of times he’s fought against those disgusting creatures, until came one where he finds himself following a Mimic _as_ a Mimic, swimming through murky waters until he gets to a destination that he recognized as _home._

And this pulsating, red-orange blob, situated against gravity in the ceiling of an underwater cavern like a hideous sun – yeah, that’s no home of his. He wasn’t even sure if this is Earth. It's repulsive. It reminded him of a heart organ, or alternatively, when its middle split open and pushed forth a hundred new Mimics before inhaling thousands of old ones – a vagina.

The only reason Oikawa’s Mimic wasn’t among one of those sucked back into _mother_ is because it's sharing its awareness with Oikawa, who's suspecting that this is no dream, and had seized full control and was demanding to know the precise location of this place.

He forces his Mimic to swim up, towards the surface of the water. Carefully at first, then recklessly fast because he didn’t want to be caught. It travels a good distance down, and then up, before finally breaking the surface and turning towards the point that they’d come from.

That volcano was so distinctive, anyone in the world would have recognized it on sight. Mount Fuji.

The Mimic he's inhabiting seemed confused to be out in the open. But Oikawa’s way ahead. He bounds onto shore, charges clumsily towards the military camp and gets them slaughtered immediately by hundreds of rounds of artillery.

* * *

 

_161 st  _

Dying _as_ a Mimic is truly an eye-opening experience. So that really hadn't been a dream. Did that imply that in reverse, there had also been a Mimic conscious inhabiting Oikawa’s body in loop 160?

Disturbing and morbidly fascinating, but he's going to have to think about that later. He’s just managed to snag the end of the elusive golden thread. There's no time to waste. He shakes Iwaizumi awake and drags him down to Sugawara’s lab while giving him the most efficient blow-by-blow of his ability and mission.  

He doesn’t want to jinx anything, so he swallows down the “This could be it, period” that he almost wanted to tack on and instead digs his fingernails into Iwaizumi’s palm, waking Suga up to give him the blow-by-blow next.

The general plan is the same as it had been in the past, only now instead of guesswork and extrapolations, they were going on from a mind-sharing vision. 

“What happened in that loop then, since it sounds like you and that Mimic’s consciousness… swapped bodies?”

“I hope you shot me,” Oikawa addresses Iwaizumi. Charmingly, he looked offended by the suggestion.

“I can’t believe they would locate their base so close to our military defenses,” Suga continues, inputting data into his machines to verify Oikawa’s theory.

“They must feel pretty close to a victory,” Iwaizumi raises a good point, and Oikawa agrees.

“I’m killing them all today,” he swears. Time is of the essence; and despite the precautions he’s taken, he fears that the Mimics might have also figured out that their location had been made known to their enemy.

“Readings are all affirming our suspicions. You wanna first send a recce team out to check?”

“I’ll do it myself,” Oikawa says. “I’m dead sure of this.” With the lead verified, there's no point in waiting. His insides are already charged with adrenaline.

“But this is going to be a completely new battlefield to you-“

Oikawa shakes his head. “If I try and figure it all out by looping, the enemy will realize and move their base.” 

“You’ll be charging in blind,” Suga says, still worried.

“I’ll just be risking as much as you guys are.” And more, since he's the one with the special ability that the whole damn world was counting on.

Iwaizumi squeezes his hand. “Let’s end this.”

They round up the rest of _Aoba Johsai_ and set off in an hour’s time.

En route on the carrier, Oikawa makes his rounds to each individual member and checks their exoskeleton suit. Him and Iwaizumi weren’t donning them, staying back to fly out the bomb. The team is there as a decoy for the enemy, to distract them with other reinforcements while him and Iwaizumi charged into the heart of the beast. 

He’s uncharacteristically quiet and pensive. His team picked up on his mood and all seemed tenser than normal. “We have to ensure this mission succeeds,” he says.

He has all of their undivided attention, eight pairs of solemn, attentive eyes. He knew first-hand that every single one of them trusted him enough to give their lives up for the mission, if necessary. There’s no saving any of them individually, and he especially couldn’t choose them over this mission. This very one, which he's decided to make his last. But still Oikawa wanted to be selfish.

“When you find yourselves in a life-or-death situation…”

He swallows. He locks eyes briefly with Iwaizumi, who was standing at his right, before looking back at the whole team again.

“Save yourself.” _Because I can’t save you all._ They look surprised to hear it. Personally, Oikawa felt liberated. He stands there and waits with them as their drop time approached.

And then came the time for the true farewell. He watches them go, one by one, Kindaichi’s hair whipping in the wind, Hanamaki’s eyes flashing, Matsukawa saluting as he fell away.

He keeps a little fire of hope burning in his heart for each of them.

Now the plane was down to him, Iwaizumi, and the big payload. And ten times the number of weapons and ammo compared to Oikawa's last attempt. He’s not taking any chances. He picks up a rifle as the bay doors swing shut. Iwaizumi follows his lead. The two of them head towards the cockpit area.

“How many times have you been through this?” Iwaizumi asks, which he almost always did, in loops where he was informed about Oikawa’s ability.

“This is my 161st loop,” he answers immediately.

Iwaizumi blanches. “You remember the number?”

“Of course I keep track.”

“How?”

“One of my many talents, Iwa-chan.” It would have destroyed his mind if he hadn’t kept count. It's hardly a satisfying answer, but Oikawa doesn't want to bog him down with a detailed explanation when the both of them needed to be 100% focused on this incredibly important  _final_  mission. Anyhow, it's enough of a challenge for Iwaizumi to wrap his head around the number, and what it would have been like to have lived and died 160 distinct times.

“ _Fuck_.” His boyfriend swears.

“Yeah, fuck.”

They don’t talk anymore as their plane nears the volcano. By the piercing, alarmed clicking noises from down below it was clear that the enemy had taken notice, but they were still too far up the ground for any Mimics to reach them.

“Four minutes to destination!” Iwaizumi calls.

The plane starts shaking like they're going through rough turbulence. Soon they starts to hear scratching noises from the underbelly of the plane. “It’s the enemy,” Oikawa affirms to Iwaizumi, knowing they were trying to pry the bay doors open.

The plane dips suddenly to the left. A new weight. He tracks this one’s movement solely based on sound, and was already firing the moment it shattered two of the cockpit windows on the right.

That one dies, but the one beneath their plane is still alive.

Iwaizumi backs away from the broken glass, gun up.

“Three minutes. What do you think will happen after we drop the bomb?”

New sounds from above head. Dark shadows dart quickly the broken windows. Iwaizumi fires first, followed by Oikawa.

“I don’t know for sure,” Oikawa admits. He’d been full of grim confidence in front of the others, but putting so much hope in an entirely fresh playthrough is making him nervous in a way that he hadn’t felt for a very long time. He felt  _mortal._ If he failed this shot, the outcome might as well be permanent death, because he's not sure he's going to be able to take on any more loops after this. Not one there's so much _finality_ infused into this one. 

A new Mimic throws itself through the front windows so powerfully that it gets stuck, pulling the front of their plane into a dive. Right after this one’s corpse falls away, another one replaces it and gets fully onboard. The both of them backpedal while firing. Oikawa ends up standing directly over the bay doors, the trembling of the floor panels resonating with the beat of his heart.

“Iwa!” he calls in warning. He’s too close to the windows.

His instinct proved dead accurate. The remaining windows shatter just as Iwaizumi backs away; right as another one climbs through the original hole, its swinging limbs throwing him into the controls.

Oikawa almost shouted, but saved the energy and focused on firing , advancing carefully. His view of Iwaizumi was now blocked by both Mimics, but he could hear gunfire up front as well.

His gun runs out. Oikawa throws it in a perfect arc and timing, getting it lodged down one Mimic’s throat. He leaps over to the ammo pile and shoots the first thing he gets his hands on – a bazooka.

His Mimic flies back out the window it came in from, thrown so hard that it knocked back yet another one that had been attempting to climb in.

Iwaizumi is flat on the ground, his gun jammed in the Mimic’s mouth, holding it back with all his strength. There were large wounds in its body and it's missing multiple limbs, but its kill intent is still going strong. Oikawa swaps for a new rifle and fires into the back of its skull.

Iwaizumi crawls to his feet. His gait seemed awkward. He pounces on the controls and knocks the button to open the doors and release the bomb.

Oikawa wanted to throw him a rifle, but he didn’t have the time. A Mimic had stuck its limbs in, reaching for Iwaizumi. Oikawa fires, but not before its claw cuts across Iwaizumi’s back, splattering blood on the floor.

Before he could destroy it, air pressure rushes in from behind him, and a black, sticky claw reaches like a sickle around his right knee – and cuts.

Oikawa screams in pain and anger. His other leg stumbles and he falls, firing blindly before even turning around fully to see his attacker.

The ugly face of a Mimic is less than a half a meter away from his.

Before Oikawa could finish his kill – or get killed by it – there’s a massive explosion, and a wave of heat blasts upwards through the opening.

He’s thrown up from the floor by the shockwave. The heat is followed immediately by a flash of blinding light. It doesn’t emanate from the door and it’s not from the explosion. It's something else altogether, with no perceivable source, moving to engulf everything mindlessly. It catches Oikawa’s body in mid-air, keeping it airborne, dragging out the time it took for him to hit the floor – to eternity.

Every single cell in him feels like it's being subject to the same dimensional warp that he’d encountered that time in the motel with Iwaizumi.

He fears that this time he’s dying for good. 

For the longest time he’s cocooned inside a pure white vacuum, and doesn’t perceive any change in or outside of his body – until he blinks.

And he’s abruptly yanked back to reality, inside a broken but airborne plane, his right knee screaming in agony.

Iwaizumi is – here, holding him. His mouth is open, but Oikawa couldn’t hear his voice.

His face is anguished and too familiar a sight, from all those loops that he’d been careless and forced Iwaizumi to watch him die – and himself, watching Iwaizumi watch him die.

Oikawa _cannot_ draw his last breath now.

He’d found his true reality. He’d destroyed all the aliens. He’d retaken control of his fate. The world and Iwaizumi were both saved.

Oikawa was _not_ going to die.

He pushes himself up and regurgitates blood all over the floor. Blue-black, steaming, alien blood.

“ _Fuck!_ Tooru!”

There’s wetness against his lips, which he wipes with his hand. When he pulls it away he sees that it’s red.

Back to red. Back to human.

“Can you hear me? Tooru!!”

He wipes his mouth with the back of his other hand, just in case, and turns to latch onto Iwaizumi. Clumsily but enthusiastically. The kiss tastes like rust.

Iwaizumi’s arms wound around his upper body, tight and unrelenting. _He’s_ crying. Oikawa wipes them away and starts to laugh. It sounded maniacal even to himself, but he couldn't help it. “I did it,” he crows, with as much enthusiasm as his battered body would allow. “I _actually_ did it!”

Iwaizumi makes a pained noise. “I know…” he strokes Oikawa's hair. “I _know_. I know I know I _know_ , Tooru.”

He’s keeping something from him, but Oikawa’s got all the _real_ time now to find out, so he's content to let him hold his peace – for now.

* * *

 

_Epilogue_

In real time.

Oikawa wakes up differently each time, usually around mid-day, when the afternoon sun is fully up and the curtains fully drawn – thanks Iwa-chan – so that the light hits him directly in the face.

It’s a different bed, a different room. Away from the gloomy military compound and in a new place where peace can be rebuilt. As long as Iwaizumi is with him – and the world’s governments pays him monthly stipends like clockwork – he’s doesn’t have a thing to worry about. Life is good.

He ambles out of the bedroom to find him.

“I love that your hobby for cooking is greater than your hobby for exercising.”

Iwaizumi, who was in the midst of taking out a batch of fresh cookies, immediately starts shoving the tray back in the oven.

“But won’t that burn them?”

“You can eat burnt cookies for all I care.”

“Hey!”

He takes them back out, but slaps Oikawa’s hand away before he could take one.

“Did you hear?” Oikawa says, rubbing the back of his hand. “They’re talking about erecting a statue in my honor!”

“I pity the town that will be subject to your gigantic ugliness on a daily basis for eternity.”

“Yeah, so maybe I should write back to them and tell them to just put it outside our front door. Subject you to the face of my massive greatness, every single day.”

“I don’t need to,” Iwaizumi rolls his eyes. “I have memories.”

In the blink of an eye, the mood shifts from domestic bantering to solemn and serious discussion.

“ _What_ memories?” he demands. 

Or at least for Oikawa it does. Iwaizumi starts to pipe the icing and replies idly “160 lives.”

Oikawa snatches his right wrist. A large dollop of icing drops onto the cookie, half on and half off it. Iwaizumi gives him a subdued, irritated slash unimpressed look.

 _“When?”_ Oikawa demands.

“White flash on the plane, after the bomb went off.”

That was _half a year_ ago. “Why… Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was overwhelmed,” Iwaizumi answers flatly.

Fair enough. Oikawa embraces him with a jackhammering heart. With a sigh, Iwaizumi puts down the piping bag and hugs him back.

“I understand,” Oikawa whispers fiercely, reassuring him. That is the most important thing he had to let Iwaizumi know. “I understand.”

“I know, Tooru,” Iwaizumi says, as he had, back on that plane, in that same bone-weary tone of voice he'd used. 

So all the stupid things he’d done or said in those loops, when he’d thought they were inconsequential, and for all intents and purposes only mattered to himself only – “What about that second-last loop, when I swapped consciousness with a Mimic?”

“I’m not talking about that one ever.” Iwaizumi’s reply is surprisingly ominous. “Let’s talk about loop 112.” 

That’s the- “It’s the fertility clinic one.” Oikawa stiffens and slowly pulls his face away.

The smirk on Iwaizumi’s face now seemed malicious. _Oh no._ “I can’t, do that, uh-“ He starts babbling. “I still think that it’s a _terrible_ idea, I mean, amazing for other people, maybe, but not really for us, you know? And the computer-generated images of our, um, offspring, didn’t really look the way I wanted them to look. I’m thinking that the reason is maybe we, or more specifically _you,_ aren’t as good-looking in real life as-“

He cuts himself off. Iwaizumi’s pulled out a ring, but now he had a moderately displeased expression on his face. “I’ll keep this then,” he threatens.

Oikawa’s attention has been grabbed and he feels sheepish now, but he still had to clarify. “So no babies-“

“Will you just marry me in peace?” Iwaizumi grouses. Oikawa tries to kiss him, but Iwaizumi sticks a hand over his mouth to block it, like  _but wait._ Now that he's got Oikawa staring at him in confusion, Iwaizumi takes his time to explain. Licking his lips, his goes: “I bought it the day before you got stuck in the loop cycle.”

 _Ah-ha._ He’d wondered at that plenty of times himself, whenever he noticed how cagey Iwaizumi would get on the topic of marriage. He'd never let himself pin too much hope on that thought, though, but now- “You never told me,” Oikawa says. “Not even all those times when you were dying.” His voice is accusatory and even though he's being held so tightly he feels as though he's just been sucker-punched in the gut. 

He wanted a future together, of course Oikawa did. But trying to imagine what it would have been like if he hadn't secured this precious reality took all his breath away. 

That, along with Iwaizumi's next works. “I almost did. All those times when _you_ were dying.”

Oikawa squeezes his eyes shut, takes deep breaths, in sync with Iwaizumi, remembering that things have changed and that they're happy now. 

“I needed time to process…” Iwaizumi continues. “The implications that came with my new memories of all those times that I’d chosen to not say anything.”

“Those don’t count,” Oikawa says to him immediately, not wanting him to be hard on himself. There were certain things from the loops you had to hold close to heart – and others that you had to discard. Throw away the horror. But keep all of the faith. It's no easy feat but one had to try - try, for all the love in the world. 

“They don’t,” Iwaizumi agrees. “Not from this point on.”

And Oikawa takes the ring from him and puts it on his finger himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Peace out. 
> 
>  
> 
> _(lovely – by Billie Elish & Khalid)_
> 
>  
> 
> I tried to write this premise years ago when the movie came out, with kagehina main, and added oikage on the side for tragedy (because Oikawa is dead). [Here’s](https://resultingingoodfaith.tumblr.com/post/182338377554/haikyuu-edge-of-tomorrowau-plot-bunny-up-for) my original fanfic idea, if you're curious. This plot bunny is up for adoption! 
> 
> I want to say a big thank you to the HVC discord who organized this Secret Santa exchange and made it possible for me to squeeze out this long piece of angst for a AU that I have always loved!!! I never could have done this otherwise!


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